Whistlin Bob

It’s been a bit of a barren few months for observing- bits and pieces here and there, but no really good session to get properly stuck in. The forecast for last night was looking great all through the week but gradually deteriorated as it drew closer and was looking decidedly iffy by the time last night arrived. There were a few breaks in the cloud so I decided to set up just before ten (hey- no work today! 😀 ). This was soon looking decidedly optimistic: First stint: M42 – really nice view at 55x with UHC filter- well able to distinguish the fainter nebulosity behind as well as the bright core. Despite upping the mag, however, the trap would not reveal any more than 4 stars. M43 and Running Man also looking really good. Until they disappeared. Yep, clouds. Swung the scope round to a clearer bit of sky near Ursa Major: M81 – Nice view of the core, but little extension beyond. First view for a while- nice to see this pair rising again after hugging the evening horizon for the last few months. M82- A better sight- some distinct mottling along it and thickening at the core. Then the clouds got it. There’s a gap! Nice split on Castor NGC2371 – Planetary Nebula – I don’t know this one. Quite faint. It really blinks. Oh- it’s gone. Blow this- headed inside for a drink and some cursing of UK weather. Kept checking with gradually diminishing enthusiasm every 20 minutes or so. One last look at 12:15- Wow- crystal clear! Right… Cone nebula – this was my imaging target for the night so I thought I’d have a look. The Christmas tree cluster was nice and pretty, but after letting my eyes relax and adapt the nebulosity emerged. This is the best view I’ve ever had of this object. Now we’re talking! Dropped down to the Rosette- same experience. I’ve only seen hints of this before, but whilst the overall shape was hard to discern (it was filling the 30mm FOV) the central cluster was nice and prominent and by holding it centrally and just looking round the view lots of wispy structure gradually emerged. I spent a while on this. Really nice. Next I thought I’d have a look at Sirius and see if the Pup was visible, despite being just above my neighbours house. Upping the magnification and putting the aperture mask on it was… dancing like a disco glitterball. No chance! Leo Triplet. Leo was now rising high over the rooftops so I took my first view of the season at the triplet. It was really nice and prominent in the 30mm, but the best view was in the Baader zoom where a bit more shape was discernible. Even NGC 3628 was easy to spot- good conditions indeed. C/2017 T2 Panstarrs Comet – This took a lot of finding- very careful star hopping in the ep from Miram on the edge of Perseus. In Sky Safari it looks like you can follow the tail, but for me only the head was visible and this was a pretty faint smudge, jumping several fields of view across to find it and working with star patterns. From here it was a short hop to the Double Cluster- always such a good sight. By now this was well over to the North West, but this is a good direction for me and the view was lovely and steady with lots of the stars yielding plenty of colour- a wonderful sight. I thought from here I’d go and look at the Heart Nebula, but took a slightly wrong turn and found the Stock 2 Open Cluster instead. This is a new one on me, but was a nice rich view, filling more than the eyepiece at 30mm. The Heart was a bit fainter than the Rosette and Cone, but I could still see the bright section around the central open cluster. The Soul was brighter- the nebulosity was more prominent- especially around the ‘neck’ and ‘feet’ bits. This was fast turning into my best ever night for nebulae, and to keep it going I moved up to Capella to try for the Flaming Star. Very pleasingly, not only was it clearly visible, but I could make out the rippling texture along the top edge of it. Feeling like I was on a roll I moved across to the ‘Tadpoles’ nebula (surely it should be called this?) next to it. This didn’t show any texture, but some wisps were definitely visible. I’m really fond of the clusters in Auriga so I took the 30mm out and did a nice tour of M36, M37 and M38 with the Baader zoom. It was getting on for 3 now and really time for bed but with Ursa Major rising high in the sky I couldn’t resist a quick look at M51. Both cores were quite prominent and the bridge between them too, but I couldn’t get much further into the arms on this occasion. I’ve had the scope out a few times over the last few months and a few nice views, but for various reasons it hasn’t really come together into a properly decent session like this. There were some fabulous views and it was enhanced by some virtual companionship on our local WhatsApp group. The thing that has me scratching my head is why the views of the nebulae were so good. I’ve been using the same equipment for a while now (14inch dob, 30mm Aero Eyepiece and UHC filter) but it’s never been close to this despite some apparently excellent transparency and sessions at darker sites. I guess just another reminder of what a capricious pursuit this is!

Rob an 18% moon world have a small effect, but more importantly does not rise until 4 in the morning. I suspect you'll be fine on your preferred date.

Ironing chairs work well too 👍 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leifheit-Multi-Seat-Niveau-White/dp/B0000DH7KA/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=ironing+chair&qid=1578942882&sr=8-3

Hello- from an exiled Suffolk native. Although I don't think the suburban Ipswich skies that I grew up under were any better then the Midlands ones I put up with now!

Apologies- I've just re-read your original post and you're looking for targets, in which case I'll defer to John's advice!

I bought an 8 inch Dob 5 years ago and it lit a fire that burns even more strongly now. I did struggle to start with, but the things that really moved me on were: - Quikfinder as John suggests, for getting in the right area. - A RACI finderscope (I'm just not very good at the yoga positions a straight through one requires and my skies are too light polluted for the Quikfinder alone). - An adjustable ironing chair for comfort. - Skysafari on my phone, with the field of view set up for the finderscope and the eyepiece I'm using on my scope, and with my phone dimmed to preserve dark adaption. None of these things are critical, but all greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the hobby.

We're you guiding? Poor tracking could cause blurring. Is your camera modified, and if so were you using any sort of filter? Bloated stars can result from no IR cut if the filter has been completely removed. You could improve this significantly in the processing by using the Starnet PI extension to remove the stars, process only for the galaxy and then add the stars back in with Pixelmath with much less of a stretch on them.

I really like that- in particular that you've managed not to blow out the brighter parts too much- presumably with the different exposure lengths. I also really like the star colours. It's good fun this vintage lens business- I've been using an f4 Jupiter 135 and an f4.5 Tair 300 this year and really pleased with both- total spend £65 (so long as you ignore the filters, mount, camera, software etc etc!!!). They don't stand up to pixel peeping, but that doesn't bother me. Looking at this I'm wondering if I 'need' a 200 as well! 2 thoughts I did have: - Are you sigma clipping when you stack? If so, that should sort out any pixels affected by satellite and aircraft trails without needing to reject whole frames. Though obvs keep the Santa one 😁 - There's a lot of hydrogen alpha in this area- if you have the option to get your camera modded I think you'll pick up quite a bit of red cloud around M42 in this area.

Really like that- agree about the noise, but I think the processing is nicely balanced, and I really like the star colours.

Welcome to the Dob club! 😁 Beware- it is addictive....

That's pretty wonderful! Look forward to seeing some more 😁

Finally had a chance to catch up with some processing this weekend. Firstly- here’s a widefield shot including the Soul nebula and the Double Cluster from 4th December. This is taken from the best 70% of two hours of data using vintage 135mm Russian lens on a 600d and Star Adventurer, with the usual set of calibration frames. Next up here’s a Ha and Oiii from 1st December on the Heart. This is from 14x10 mins of Oiii and 30x 10 minutes of Ha. I should have done them the other way around as the Ha is a stronger signal, but I had the Oiii in to start with. I’ve used an “HOO” palette for this- feeding the Ha into the Red and then the Oiii into both Blue and Green, with the Blue favoured for no other reason than that I quite like the purplish hue it gives. I’ve enjoyed messing about with the Starnet++ programme lately- so here’s a starless version: Finally, I think at times I’m guilty of getting too involved with the process of putting these images together and losing track of the incredible size and structure of these objects and the miracle of being able to take pictures of the them from my back garden. So here’s a crop of Melotte 15, the Open Cluster at the “Heart of the Heart”. Our estimate is that this nebula is 7,000 light years distant from Earth and has a diameter of 107 light years across. Using the pixel scale (1 light year=23 pixels) I’ve done a (very) rough approximation of our Stellar Neighbourhood around the nebula structure in the middle of the cluster. What would our night sky look like if we had this in the middle of it? Would it have changed our biology, our myths, our history? For sure, it’d make for some pretty cool photos…

Wonderfully presented!

Some terrific images there!

I love the wide field of view you're getting with that 60edf. Have you considered using Starnet to create a star-less layer and process the nebulosity separately? It world also help conceal the lack of a field flattener.

Very nice. I really like seeing the output from the different filters, so thanks for sharing.

Especially like the California Neil 😁

Thanks @DaveS, that's really helpful- especially your comments on the 183 amp glow- that has me leaning towards the 1600

I've been imaging with a DSLR for the last couple of years and having a ball. At the beginning of the summer I picked up a 2nd hand Canon 550d with a home built Peltier Cooler which works very nicely and until this past week I was confident this would see me through a few seasons at least. What's happened this week: - Last weekend I did some Bi-colour imaging on the Heart and Elephant Trunk nebulae. Pretty pleased with the Heart, but the camera seems pretty poor at picking up faint Oiii (I know it's almost always fainter than Ha) and it got almost nothing out of the Elephant Trunk. - I just got a bonus at work which I really wasn't expecting. - My wife said "It's Christmas- you should have one of those cameras you keep looking at" (I knew there was a reason I married her!!!) - I saw that ZWO have a sale on- thinking about 183mm Pro or 1600mm Pro. So, if you don't mind, a few questions to the knowledgeable... - Have any of you gone from a One Shot Colour camera to Mono, decided you didn't like it, and then gone back again? - My first love is observing. I'm lucky to have a shed with a permanent setup in it so a perfect astro evening for me is setting the rig running and leaving it to it whilst I get the dob out. I know filters would need to be changed now and again- but does it take very long? Are the filters really parfocal? Would my approach be any less viable with mono than OSC? - My local council installed very bright LED streetlights last year. I was only able to carry on RGB imaging with an IDAS D2 filter. Would I still need to use it as well as the RGB filters on a mono setup? - I've posted my Heart below- the Oiii in this I fed into the Blue and Green channels (with emphasis on blue 'coz I like purple!) and comes from 14x 10 min subs with a Baader 8nm filter. Could I expect a much stronger signal from 140 mins mono integration time or have I just got kit acquisition fever?

That's a fantastic video. I've completed the Yorkshire 3 Peaks a few times and it's a place I know well and love. A real pleasure to watch- thanks for sharing!

Big fan of star trails generally- but this is special!

With apologies to Crocodile Dundee- "That's not a Dob, THIS is a Dob"

I'm using a 200p on an HEQ5 Pro with a lump of a home cooled DSLR and a finder guider. All up it's just under 10kgs. I need a counterweight extension bar to balance it. So long as I do this it's ok, although the guiding seems more susceptible to bad seeing than with the 130pds. M13 included for evidence. 😁

Had a go at the Veil with my Tair 300mm lens on Monday night, using Quadband filter and Star Adventurer. 2 minute subs was giving me trails so I reduced it to 90 seconds. The forecast said there was only 45 minutes before clouds rolled in, but they held off most of the evening and I ended up with 111 subs and used DSS to stack the best 70%. It’s needed a lot of processing for various reasons (I don’t think the filter and lens get on too well), and certainly doesn’t stand up to any pixel-peeping, but I’m still quite pleased with it.

Tricky because it's all about personal preference. I was warned off the zoom due to fov, but then I borrowed one and was completely converted. The convenience with them of being able to instantly slide up and down the magnification greatly increases my enjoyment. I have a 30mm aero, a Baader zoom, a 7mm celestron Xcel and some WO bino viewers along with a couple of Barlow's. I'd say the zoom is in for about 60% of my viewing. Good condition ones come up second hand quite frequently.